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In her essay “Beyond Bread and Cheese: The Artisanal Approach to Teaching and Learning” (2016, Moffly Media) author and Head of School at The Ethel Walker School in Connecticut, Meera Viswanathan describes a trend in education away from “industrialized learning” towards something that more personalized, relational, and authentic.

Good teaching is not mass produced and neither are best practices. Engaged learning is artisinally-produced. Viswanathan writes, “Rather than following dicta set by others without reconsideration, the craftsman aspires to something more ideal, a transcendent possibility in both small and large ways.” Hence, good teachers are personal, relational, embrace possibility, and are always perfecting their craft – “that each endeavor is not a replica of what came before, but rather creative experimentation within a limited framework towards some new possibility, something better, something approaching the ideal.”

The classroom is a place to introduce students to new worlds, worlds that we could not have imagined and imagine for the better. Key note speakers, Adora Svitak and Kwame Alexander emphasized the need for teachers and students to work on understanding suffering that is going on in our communities as well as the suffering happening around the world in order to help imagine a better world. Literature is a catalyst to transform the world. Teachers need to teach diverse books and tackle tough topics. We gain so much when we read and write.

The classroom should introduce students to the possibility of deep sustained engagement and wonder with ideas, the world, and life around us. Students are more invested when they are engaged. The theme of the conference was “Transforming Lives Through Literacy 2.0” – Students have the power of technology to search and seek what they want to know. Learning in the classroom is not about the acquisition of information anymore. Our classrooms need to be places where students have VOICE and CHOICE to discover, explore, wonder about the world and their own interests. Reading and Writing Workshop, Genius Hour, and Passion Projects are all teaching practices that allow students to personalize learning and transcend what is. Technology has the power to expand the walls of our classrooms around the world and across the universe.

Teachers and students must learn to question their own assumptions and recognize the limitations of their thoughts, thereby expanding horizons. Critique and self reflection are for the cultivation of alternative viewpoints and perspectives. Compassion and empathy are based on opening oneself up to others, ideas, and experiences. Students need to hear, read, and see diverse texts, genres, to learn about the world and what is possible. Engaging in conversations about the world and the recent events in our community can help empower young people. This can also help transform our classrooms into authentic, active, and relevant learning spaces all students want to participate and be a part of.

Later this week I will be heading to Boston for the International Literacy Association Annual Conference in Boston, MA. I am excited to be presenting with two of my esteemed colleagues: poet, Laura Purdie Salas and blogger and literacy consultant, Carol Varsalona.

Our hands on workshop will present a series of creative and collaborative activities integrating art and technology with literacy. More than a dozen digital tools and resources will be featured to examine, explore, and share, including Google Docs, word clouds, KidBlog, photo-editing tools: PicMonkey, Canva, PicLits, and Wonderopolis so educators can model and integrate these resources into their instruction. Our objective is that participants will engage in conversations about the effect of digital literacy on classroom instructional practices and literacy learning to encourage teachers to build classrooms that promote choice and voice.

Here are sketch notes I created highlighting the tools and literacy strategies we will cover during our presentation.

As technology continues to expand the way students and teachers engage in literacy, teachers need to embrace the role of digital media in the classroom to foster a culture of creativity and innovation. There are dozens of tech tools that help young people build literacy skills and simultaneously allow students to become writers, poets, and digitally literate meaning makers. Literacy 2.0 brings to the forefront digital tech tools that enhance learning and literacy in the digital age where students are content creators and critical thinkers.

Shifting teachers’ thinking about writing from a traditional sense to next generation literacy instruction utilizing digital toolkits, electronic devices, and digital platforms will allow students to become meaning makers where voice, choice, and perspective are honored.

How will you deepen your understanding of literacy development through Literacy 2.0?

Here are some tools we will address in our workshop.

Want to know more? I have included the slides to our presentation for more insight and digital literacy tools.

1. We need more diverse texts. It is so important that the books we share with our students reflect a wide range of experiences. In addition, there should be a range of ethnicities, race, socio economic classes, and sexual orientations. Teachers cannot only offer the classics as reading material in their classroom. There are so many amazingly diverse YA authors who are telling honest stories our students need to have access to. These authors include Jason Reynolds, Kekla Magoon,Kwame Alexander, and poet Janet Wong to name a few. Diversity is also about offering different formats and genres of texts.

2. There is a lot of research on reading. Research shapes our teaching and offers beneficial information about our students from reading abilities to self perceptions about oneself as a reader and writer. Teachers need to remember that data is more than just numbers and test scores. Keeping records helps to inform our practice, and helps teachers to reflect on how we can do better to meet the needs of our students.

3. Surround yourself and your students with great books. I call this book love. Share with your students your own reading life and have students write their reading autobiography. Allow students to choose their own reading material and read aloud great books to introduce your students to different genres, authors, and texts. #BookLove is not going to happen if everyone is reading the same book. Classroom libraries should contain more than 500 books.

4. Reading Writing Workshop is back in style. Maybe it never left your district, but it left mine and now it is back. Students need time to read and write in class everyday and the reading writing workshop model helps students cultivate their reading and writing life. Teaching in small bursts (mini-lessons) is much more effective than 40 minute power point lectures.

5. Get your struggling readers invested. We all have angry readers, disenchanted readers, quiet readers, attention readers, picky readers, and competitive readers. Teachers need to motivate, engage, and build confidence and connections with these types of readers to help raise confidence in all our readers. Teacher and Nerdy Book Club writer, Justin Stygles, presented a great session about transforming the struggling readers in our classrooms. He spoke about teachers being reading mentors rather than reading dictators. He mentioned that time and building relationships is key when working with struggling readers.

6. Literacy is EVERY teacher’s responsibility. Yes, I am talking to all the math, science, and social studies teachers out there. One cannot leave all the responsibility of teaching students to read in the English Language Arts teacher’s hands. All content area teachers are responsible for helping their students be literate and succeed. Integrating literacy in the content areas can include reading aloud a text with content connections to having students practice specific reading and writing skills. The key is to work together.

7. Collaboration is key.The old adage says, “It takes a village.” Within your school, district, and community, educating young people is not an isolated task. With social media teachers can collaborate in many ways beyond their classroom walls. Get involved in a Mystery Skype, global collaborative project, or the Global Read Aloud.

8. There need to be more word work. Yes, I am talking about vocabulary. And no, a word wall is not enough to help students learn words or an effective vocabulary strategy. Neither is giving students a list of words and having them define and write sentences for each of the words. Teaching students roots, prefixes, and suffixes helps students to decode words and define the word in context. Let’s give it a try, do you know what arachibutyrophobia* means? Break it down and see if you can figure it out without using Google.

9. Teachers are writers too. If you are going to teach writing and expect your students to be writing like “real” writers, than you also need to step up to the plate. So, start a blog, write a story, poem, or article and share your work with others. Model the reading and writing life you want from your students.

10. Connect with others, you are not alone. The amazing thing about social media (Twitter especially) is that you can connect with so many amazing educators around the world on any digital device. Annual conferences like ISTE, NCTE, and ILA just help to bring us all together under the same roof from time to time. It is so important for all teachers to have and cultivate a professional learning network (PLN). A PLN helps build connections, inspires, is collaborative, and contributes to one’s learning and professional development. Great teachers don’t just show up, they share and participate and are always learning.

*Arachibutyropobia – the fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth.